


Greedy Bones

by orphan_account



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist (Anime 2003)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-03-04 03:48:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,294
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24567208
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Back when a teenaged Izumi was Dante's apprentice, she had a very strange friend...
Relationships: Izumi Curtis/Greed
Kudos: 4





	Greedy Bones

“You aren’t the old witch, are you?”

Izumi stopped sweeping at once, turning toward the sound of the man’s voice. But she was alone in the windowless storage room. The only living thing she saw was a small brown spider, scuttling along a crack in the floorboard.

Her first instinct was to ignore the voice and continue with her work, pretending that she hadn’t heard it. But she knew she hadn’t imagined it, and her curiosity won out.

“If you’re talking about Dante, you’re right. She isn’t here right now.” Carefully, Izumi surveyed the room, looking for anything that looked odd or out of place. Dante of the Deep Forest was a notoriously powerful alchemist, after all, and strange happenings were not unusual in this house. 

And Izumi did not startle easily.

“You’re one of her apprentices?” It was strange to hear a male voice here. Few travelers came out this far into the wilderness, and Dante guarded her privacy with great care. 

“Yes.” She gripped the broom more tightly, just in case. “Who are you?”

“Are you a pretty one, or are you a clever one?” There was a teasing arrogance to his voice.

Izumi glanced outside, and made sure there was no one in the corridor before answering. “Both. Why does it matter?” She inclined her head, listening more carefully.

“Dante only takes on two kinds of apprentices. The clever ones with real talent, she turns into great alchemists, and then manipulates them into working for her own ends. The pretty ones… she finds other uses for.” 

Izumi’s eyes narrowed. It was an old rumor, one she knew didn’t have much merit. Dante was appreciative of young women, but her lusts were purely for men.

“Who are you?” she asked again. The voice was coming from a corner of the room, from a wooden cabinet with rusted metal hinges. Forcing it open, Izumi found it empty except for a cloth-wrapped bundle on the lowest shelf.

After a moment’s hesitation – but only a moment’s – she unwrapped it. Inside the moldering cloth was a human bone. The left femur from an adult male.

There was an alchemy array, very small and delicately etched into the surface below the curve of the joint. It glimmered slightly with alchemic power as the voice spoke again.

“Well, hello there, sweetheart. My name’s Greed. What’s yours?” 

\---

Izumi had never been the type of girl to have imaginary friends. She got along very well with other children, and had never lacked for playmates. Even now, in the isolation of the Deep Forest, she kept correspondence with several friends and would go into town to see them a few times a year. 

But she found that Greed offered a welcome distraction from her studies, a mystery that she could ponder over in secret. He was charming and arrogant, and appeared to be very reasonable for a man’s soul trapped in a bone. He was very old and told half-truths as easily as he spoke his own name. 

But Greed feared Dante, despite the cocky front he put on. Izumi promised him that she wouldn’t tell her she'd found the bone – Greed claimed that Dante had murdered him and kept it as a trophy – but that was the only promise she made. 

Greed often asked Izumi to do things for him; practically every time she came into the storage room he’d whisper suggestions. He wanted her to search for the rest of his skeleton, to research particular arrays, and to betray her teacher’s confidence. Every time, something new. Something more.

As she expected, Greed was extremely stingy with information about himself. Eventually Izumi got him to admit that his being was not contained in the bone at all, but trapped somewhere else, very far way. The array allowed them to communicate, but that was all.

He often told her that she was in danger, and urged her to take precautions. Greed insinuated that Dante was plotting against her in secret, and she had done the same to countless other young girls over the years.

Of course, Izumi didn’t believe a word he said.

\---

“Tell me about yourself.” 

Dante had gone into the woods to gather medicinal herbs, which would take several hours. Izumi was meant to be studying reconstruction arrays, but she had read the relevant texts months ago. 

“I’m madly in love with you.” She could hear the laugh in his voice as she pulled aside the cloth. The array glowed faintly in the darkness of the cabinet.

“That’s a lie if I’ve ever heard one.” Izumi picked up the bone and placed it on the shelf at eye level, slightly out of sight. It was easier having a conversation like this, where she could almost pretend he was right there, slouching rakishly against the bookcase.

“Really, kiddo. You must be lonely here, with only the old bat for company.” 

“I’m not interested in talking about myself.” Izumi moved aside some knick-knacks and took a seat on the threadbare ottoman in the corner. “Tell me about you, or I’m leaving. Are you a transplanted soul? Some kind of golem?”

“Vanity isn’t my game, but fine. I’ll tell you what you want to know if you’ll do something for me, sweetheart.”

Izumi crossed her arms. This wasn’t the first time he’d tried this. “Well?”

His voice lowered to a rough whisper. “I get bored in here. Very bored. A man has needs, you know. I need and I thirst for everything in this stupid prison, because I have nothing. Nothing but what I can hear through my skull. Do you understand what that’s like? The frustration? The itches you get that can’t be scratched?”

“Get to the point, Greed.” She refused to look away, or acknowledge that she knew exactly what he was talking about.

“Scratch my itch, Izumi love. Help me relieve some tension.” It wasn’t a request, or even a demand. His voice was rife with expectation.

Izumi raised an eyebrow. “If you weren’t a voice coming out of a bone, I’d think you were propositioning me.” 

“Well, I am. I always mean what I say.” 

There had been plenty of pushy men in her life, plenty of charismatic rogues and charmers who liked the company of adolescent girls, and none of them had ever interested her in the slightest. Greed was something different. There was a hint of substance under the bravado. 

“What makes you think that I would do you any favors?” she asked.

“You’re bored, and I’m the closest thing to a gentleman caller you’ve had in a long time. Oh, yes. I can tell. You’re as frustrated as I am, cloistered in with your books and your arrays, and Dante treats you more like a maid than her apprentice.” 

She could practically see the smirk on his face. “You’ve got a big mouth, Greed, but you aren’t as smart as you like to think.”

“Really?” he drawled.

She got up, crossed the room, and took the bone from the shelf. “Do you really think it would relieve anything, just hearing it? You won’t be satisfied with sounds alone. You’ll only want more and more. I’ll make it worse instead of better. You’re asking me to torture you, Greed, and I’m not sure it’s really what you want.”

“Nobody knows want better than I do, Izumi. You’re such a tease.” The array gleamed, like a twinkling eye.

She ran her hand over the carved seal. “You’re making it very easy.” Her other hand slipped beneath her skirt as she sat down again. “I’ll bet you were an ugly man. So ugly, Dante did the world a favor, sealing you away.”

“Ugly? Oh, if you could have seen me in my prime.” His voice was a hardly more than a whisper, but the words were sharp and meaningful. “Women adored me. They worshipped the ground I walked on. Even Dante, was… inspired.”

She laughed. “You were a rake. A feckless playboy who wasted all his money on floozies and booze.” She spread her legs slightly, resting the bone across her lap.

“I knew how to enjoy the best that life had to offer. I took what I wanted with my own hands. A spitfire like you – I’d have taken my time with you,” he murmured. “There are so few men who know how to really appreciate a woman. But then, there are so few women who deserve so much appreciation.”

Her fingers slipped over her hip, and under the cloth of her undergarments. “Are you going to tell me I’m one of them, Greed? You’ve never met me. You have no idea who I am or what I want.”

“I know your sin, Izumi. The sin of those who are young enough to know everything. I wonder if Dante still hasn’t replaced the last one… or maybe it’s going to be you.” 

More riddles and taunts. 

“I have a lot of sins.” Her fingers dipped between her legs, settling at the nub of her clit. The bone in her lap was long and smooth and inevitably phallic. She held it with her free hand as she began to stroke herself. “But not as many as yours, I’d wager.”

There was a long silence, and he could tell he was listening intently to her movements and her breathing.

“Oh, yes,” he sighed, and the want in his voice had never been more apparent. “So many, many sins, you wicked girl. I miss it all so much, and my only regret is that I didn’t have more.”

“Mmmm. Tell me,” she whispered insistently, gripping the bone harder as she shifted her hand, fingers slipping past her moist labia, pushing inwards.

“Tight, isn’t it? You haven’t had nearly as much as you need, even if Dante turns a blind eye so long as you’re – ah – conscientious.” His voice had deepened to a purr. “But the opportunities are few and far between. And when you’re waiting, your fingers are never enough. Maybe you’ve tried other things. Maybe you’ve… oh yes. I can tell you have.”

She had two fingers inside herself, and her breathing was becoming more ragged. The heat was coiling in her belly, the pleasurable tension that was building rapidly to crescendo. It had only been a whim, coming in here to see what information she could tease out of Greed, and it was all slipping so quickly out of her control. 

But she couldn’t stop. “Weren’t we… talking about you?” she panted.

The bone seemed to vibrate in her hand. “Dante hates me now, but I was always her favorite. I was her masterpiece, you see. Her greatest achievement.” 

It ached, as she twisted her wet fingers. Her legs seemed to lift up slightly, of their own accord. She was close now, very close. “You were her son?” 

A long silence, and Izumi let herself go, arching into the climax of orgasm, head thrown back, chest heaving. For her accomplice’s benefit, she was vocal in her bliss, moaning and gasping with little restraint. It was perfect. 

And still, Greed was silent.

It was done, and she came back to herself, and suddenly it all felt wrong. An instant pang of regret followed pleasure. Why had she done it? Why had she let herself be goaded so far? And for what? 

“Greed?” she whispered. The bone had rolled to the floor, and she reached down to pick it up. The alchemy array glowed like an ember from a dying fire.

“I was her apprentice,” he said.

\---

“I wish you’d told me about this sooner.” Dante took the bone from her hands gingerly, examining its condition. However, she did not look in the least bit cross or suspicious. The expression on her face was neutral, as controlled and impenetrable as ever.

Izumi stepped back, eyes lowered. “I apologize. I didn’t realize he was real until he started saying all these horrible things about you.” She hesitated. “I thought he might have been one of your experiments.”

“Traitorous bitch,” Greed muttered.

“He’s a fancy bit of alchemy I’d forgotten about,” Dante replied, her tone nostalgic. She turned the bone over so that the array was faced upwards. “Think of him as a demon I sealed away a long time ago after he showed his true nature. I placed the array there, so I could talk to him, and give him a chance to repent his sins.” She caressed the bone slowly. “But I see that you haven’t shown a bit of remorse, have you Greed?”

“Never for you, old woman,” he hissed.

“Goodbye then.” And then, before Izumi could open her mouth to protest, Dante traced her finger slantwise over the carved array, and the reaction ceased. A few last glimmers of light, and it went dead. 

And Greed was silent.

Izumi gaped for moment, but recovered quickly. “Did you – ”

“He isn’t dead,” her teacher said. She tucked the bone under one arm, and picked up her basket of herbs. “He is merely contained, and will not bother us again.” Her eyes caught Izumi’s. “Be more careful in the future.”

“Yes.” And the matter was ended. Dante turned to go, and Izumi knew it would be useless to ask anything further. 

There was guilt… the only thing she would remember of the encounter in the years to come was the guilt. And perhaps that lent more credibility to his warnings than she otherwise would have given them.

She never discovered what Dante did with Greed’s bone, or where he was being held prisoner. But eventually, after long nights of research, she found one answer. She knew what Greed was.

And though Dante was good to her, and never acted suspiciously in the least, Izumi never trusted her after that.

\---

The End


End file.
